U.S. plans to share up to 60M AZ doses

• The White House plans to share as many as 60 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine, including 10 million in the coming weeks — but exactly where they will go remains to be seen.

The first 10 million doses of Oxford-astrazeneca, a vaccine not yet approved for use in the U.S., must be reviewed by the Food and Drug Administration before they can be exported, press secretary Jen Psaki said Monday.

“Our national security team, our COVID team, working with the State Department and others — we’re going to assess a range of requests, a range of needs around the world,” she said.

“We expect there to be approximately 10 million doses that could be released, if or when the FDA gives its concurrence, which could happen in the coming weeks. So this is not immediate.”

Psaki did not specifically mention sending doses of the Astrazeneca vaccine to India, noting that the U.S. is focused on what it can send immediately, and that none of the Astrazeneca stockpile has been cleared for export.

Last week, after a phone call with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, President Joe Biden noted the U.S. already had sent 1.5 million Astrazeneca doses north of the border and suggested more would be forthcoming.

“We helped a little bit there,” Biden said. “We’re going to try to help some more.”

The remaining 50 million doses are still in production and likely won’t be subject to approval until May and June, Psaki said.

Ottawa said it expects to get 1.9 million doses this week, including its very first shipment of single-dose shots from Johnson & Johnson.